Should Life Be a Sport?
If life is a sport, we should play to win.
Howdy ðŸ¤
Today we’re comparing our approach to life to our approach to sports. Whether or not you agree with the philosophy, I hope it helps provide a new framework for thinking about your life.
As always, thanks for reading!
Kevin
Should Life Be a Sport?
Every team has a mission that it strives to accomplish. A good team measures itself by something: wins, losses, championships. There is no Superbowl of Life, but I like thinking about my life in the same way.
James Clear
There are a lot of decisions to make in life. Without a framework or a philosophy to guide our thinking, each decision is no more than a guess.
We live in the moment, rely on our gut, and make decisions willy-nilly. Sometimes they’re good, and other times we regret them. This makes life feel like it’s out of control. Like we can never quite grasp the reins and point ourselves in the right direction.
Without intention, every decision is a coin flip, and our life is subject to the luck of the draw, but if we choose a philosophy or framework to guide our decision-making, we can eliminate the guessing game and take control of our lives.
One philosophy to take control of our lives and help us become a bit better each day is to treat life like a sport. This gives us a familiar structure to anchor our thinking and build a concrete system to drive our lives in the right direction.
Adopting this framework requires us to think about what winning looks like. If we’re playing basketball, we know we need to score more points than the other team. If we’re playing golf, we know we need to have a lower score than everyone else.
But if we treat life like a sport, we have to define what winning is in our life. To some, it might be a high-level corporate role and a penthouse apartment; to others, it might be a quiet lifestyle in a small town; and to someone else, it might be traveling the world and never settling down.
Once we decide what our version of winning looks like, we can get to work. The same way our training and dedication dictate an athlete’s performance on the field, the lifestyle we lead is a result of our commitment to our values.
We should always be competing against ourselves to get better. We should be working the rules to our advantage and playing to win. We should be training hard, practicing, and studying the game, and figuring out how to become the best. It should be intentional, passionate, and difficult but fun.
We can treat our lives the same way that casual athletes do, but if we do, we should expect the same results.
Amateur golfers go out on the course with high expectations. They haven’t touched a golf club in months, and yet they expect top performance from themselves. When they fall well short of their expectations, they become frustrated with the course, their clubs, and their friends, when they should be angry with themselves.
Pro golfers have even higher expectations, but they train tirelessly every day. They work on their swing constantly, meet with psychologists for their mental game, eat clean, and hit the gym. When they fall short of their expectations, they don’t blame the course or their caddie because they understand their inputs and efforts are directly correlated to their results.
If we want to lead exceptional lives, we need to train accordingly.
Prompts
Do you tackle each day as it comes or use each day intentionally to move you closer to a specific end?
What does winning look like in your life?
If you treat life like a sport what does your training need to be comprised of?
Deep Dive
The Sports Gene - David Epstein
A nuanced take on what creates success in professional sports.
Thanks for reading! I’ll see you next Sunday.
Kevin